How to make a kid feel better about the college options they have

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps, what’s really going on is disappointment regarding the result of years of private schooling costs. Essentially, the poster’s current college choices are no better than those of top kids from VA public high schools. Admission to Yale or Princeton or Williams or Amherst would have provided the snob factor the poster and their child were looking for. William and Mary, though a great school at a great price, is a consolation prize for such attitudes. I think the message for your daughter and yourself is that high-achieving and ambitious people are everywhere, not just at snobby outposts. Perhaps, it will be good for your daughter to hang-out with smart students in an environment of greater socioeconomic diversity.

I kind of feel like there's a grain of truth to this. Like, these are three objectively good schools. And they have different attributes, so OP's daughter can choose which environment feels right for her. And when she gets there, she'll be surrounded by smart, accomplished students. I get that it's tough to get turned down by your first choice, but she has good options and she needs to stop feeling sorry for herself. Such a narrow view of what counts as success is not setting her up to be happy in life.

+1

OP doesn't want her daughter with the riff raff. LOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She does sound like quite the privileged princess. Is this her first experience with not getting exactly what she wants?

+1

Does she understand that all of the schools available to her produce productive members of society, he’ll do whatever it is that she wants to do with her life?

It sounds as if you are over invested in brand names. She needs to get over that.

[Anonymous]

I’m pretty patient with teen nonsense but in this case I would (as kindly as possible) tell her to get over herself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m pretty patient with teen nonsense but in this case I would (as kindly as possible) tell her to get over herself.

+1
I second that! (mom of three teenagers)

[Anonymous]

Yes, it's a very hard admissions year out there. Maybe your DD would feel better knowing that just like she was waitlisted some places, ridiculous numbers of students who applied to Grinnell, for example, were waitlisted this year, including my senior with higher GPA and test scores. (I'm sure people could say the same for the other "safeties" on her list.) Supposedly Grinnell got 10,000 applications for fewer than 500 spots So while your DD treated it like a safety, it was a lottery for even those with high stats, and she got in. Congratulations!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Then she was led astray, by you and the counselor, or others, about the fact that top schools are a LOTTERY, and that top schools in the USA in particular have this cruel practice of leading on academically-strong kids but actually admitting athletes, legacies and donors' kids before them. Harvard rejects more valedictorians than it admits.

Additionally, many students work as hard as your child and achieve much less!!!
My own teenager has a high IQ but has several learning differences. He works extremely hard (he's working right now, in the dead of night), and for what? He's never going to get the scores and overall achievements your child has. But he's a perfectionist nonetheless and wants to do the work.

So... please don't believe your child was somehow cheated of a spot at a top university due to her hard work and achievements. It doesn't work like that. Her hard word stands on its own as a monument to her willpower, intelligence and dedication. It will serve her well throughout her life.

The unfortunate truth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to a big three, a couple decades ago. I kind of understand what you mean about working so hard. I got up at 6:30 in the morning and frequently did not go to bed until 1 o’clock at night. I worked all the time. I did sports, orchestra, drama, choir. I did community service. I got good grades. I want up going to a top 15 small liberal arts college, but not Amherst or Yale etc. Ultimately the sleep deprivation and constant stress did not seem worth it. I could’ve just focused on my grades and done one or two extracurriculars I actually enjoyed and gone to a school that was almost as good as the one I went to. I got waitlisted at three Ivies but did not get off the waitlist. My take away was to not do very many extracurriculars in college.

OP here: I have read through all the posts (and my own, which are mangled by my poor late-night grammar), but I think this one really encapsulates how she feels, for better or for worse. If she had known that she was going to wind-up at a school of this level, she feels she would have weighted her priorities differently and enjoyed life a bit more. As it stands, she's put everything into schoolwork and extracurrculars, and hasn't exactly reaped the benefits of this hard work. For what it's worth, I'd be perfectly happy for her to go to William and Mary, especially compared to these SLACs I don't know much about. Also, her counselor did class these schools as safeties for her stats, and it seems this was accurate in regard to her results at these schools.

[Anonymous]

Some of you are a raging bunch of A-holes. Sincerely. Entitled? Princess?

Op's kid's feelings are entirely valid. Anyone would be upset if you felt that you worked your a$$ off, excelled, were led to believe you fit a certain school's criteria, but failed to achieve your expectations. It suck's that your told merit dictates outcome in this country. A) that's not always the case. And B) this is an unusual year.

Op's kid is allowed to be upset. At least for a time. She's allowed to vent. Yes, even "privileged" kids get to do that. God knows I hear lots of adults on here bitch and complain and vent about far less. You folks need to check your compassion for a kid who is rightly disappointed.

[Anonymous]

Tell her to stop being so dramatic and to be proud of the very good schools that accepted her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of you are a raging bunch of A-holes. Sincerely. Entitled? Princess?

Op's kid's feelings are entirely valid. Anyone would be upset if you felt that you worked your a$$ off, excelled, were led to believe you fit a certain school's criteria, but failed to achieve your expectations. It suck's that your told merit dictates outcome in this country. A) that's not always the case. And B) this is an unusual year.

Op's kid is allowed to be upset. At least for a time. She's allowed to vent. Yes, even "privileged" kids get to do that. God knows I hear lots of adults on here bitch and complain and vent about far less. You folks need to check your compassion for a kid who is rightly disappointed.

Amen.

[Anonymous]

Nothing wrong with her feeling disappointed, but we all have to learn to process that eventually. She has three perfectly good options and a coveted private school educational experience that the vast majority can never know. (And isn’t that what it’s about? The experience and not the outcome?) I’m having a hard time mustering too much sympathy, but she’s certainly entitled to her feelings.

[Anonymous]

Thank you PP for you post. I feel the same way about OPs post. Everyone has different expectations of college and when they don't work out, give the kid some space to feel sad and get over the initial rejection. The kid is not necessarily spoiled. She had aspirations and when they don't work out it inevitably stings for a bit.

God knows, I've applied for dream jobs which I have not gotten and felt sad about it. It doesn't mean I'm ungrateful just because I have a job.

[Anonymous]

Jesus Christ.

[Anonymous]

OP, I have to say, I'm baffled to hear that a counselor at a top private school would label Grinnell College a "safety" for any student who isn't at the very, very top of the high school class. That makes no sense to me. And for you to say that you don't know much about the school speaks volumes. It consistently ranks near the top 10 of all liberal arts schools in the country, has one of the largest endowments anywhere, has a highly qualified student body, routinely sends its graduates to top graduate programs, and by every objective measure is one of the top schools in the country.

Another thing about Grinnell, though: it tends to attract kids who eschew the northeast liberal arts colleges with greater name recognition. It is not a school for kids from, shall we say, "snooty" privates with "snooty" attitudes. If I were your child, I'd absolutely choose William & Mary over Grinnell. My kid made the opposite choice, but yours -- no way would she be happy at Grinnell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a big three, a couple decades ago. I kind of understand what you mean about working so hard. I got up at 6:30 in the morning and frequently did not go to bed until 1 o’clock at night. I worked all the time. I did sports, orchestra, drama, choir. I did community service. I got good grades. I want up going to a top 15 small liberal arts college, but not Amherst or Yale etc. Ultimately the sleep deprivation and constant stress did not seem worth it. I could’ve just focused on my grades and done one or two extracurriculars I actually enjoyed and gone to a school that was almost as good as the one I went to. I got waitlisted at three Ivies but did not get off the waitlist. My take away was to not do very many extracurriculars in college.

OP here: I have read through all the posts (and my own, which are mangled by my poor late-night grammar), but I think this one really encapsulates how she feels, for better or for worse. If she had known that she was going to wind-up at a school of this level, she feels she would have weighted her priorities differently and enjoyed life a bit more. As it stands, she's put everything into schoolwork and extracurrculars, and hasn't exactly reaped the benefits of this hard work. For what it's worth, I'd be perfectly happy for her to go to William and Mary, especially compared to these SLACs I don't know much about. Also, her counselor did class these schools as safeties for her stats, and it seems this was accurate in regard to her results at these schools.

OP, I think it is all about expectations and the counselor was wrong to characterize all those schools as safeties. The fact that your DD got them all doesn't prove they were safeties, she just was fortunate enough to get in this year, when many comparable people did not, as the PP above said. I secretly thought my high-stats kid, high-achieving kid would get into certain places, or get into certain places with merit, but I purposely framed it as a bit of a crapshoot, with high stats kids having different stories at those places so let's be grateful for what we get, and it seems to have worked. Admissions season has so far been kind to her, but if it hadn't she was well set to be happy anyway. So I think you should do some work to try to reframe the issue for her -- parents usually have a lot of pull this way, and even if you told her something differently before, she will give it some weight now.